International and Chinese organizations recently participated in the 2017 China International Big Data Mining Competition in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province.

Participants — including the British Overseas Trade Board, the British Science and Innovation Network, Peking University and Fudan University — competed for 4 million yuan ($580,000) prize by showing how well they could analyze and use huge amounts of government data.

It was the third time China had held the international event, where the winners can gain access to significant funding if they go on to launch projects in Guizhou province, which was China’s first big data comprehensive environmental zone.

The basis of big data mining is abundant data sources. Therefore, participants are given access to over 9,000 data sets preserved by Chinese governments at all levels. The data relates to core fields such as tourism, transport, social security, employment, housing, religions and environmental conservation.

“More than 80 percent of Chinese information resources are stored by all levels of Chinese government, which is a tremendous waste to the information industry. We must achieve data disclosure as soon as possible.” said Premier Li Keqiang.

In response to Li’s guidance, representatives from 17 governmental data disclosure cities — such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou — announced the Jointly Promoting Data Disclosure and Application Declaration at the start of 2017 big data mining competition.

Big data mining has become a new economic growth industry. As predicted in the 2017 Deloitte Technology Trend report, the amount of global data will increase to 44 zettabytes (44 trillion gigabytes) by 2020. The McKinsey Global Institute reported that, by 2025, 60 percent of the output value of the internet of things, estimated to be $11.7 trillion, will be made by data integration and mining.

Edited by Yan Weijue and Mark Dye